Eideard

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission
Sad to see – the late Avery Cornett of Lebanon, MO

The manufacturer of the widely used baby formula Enfamil said Sunday that its testing shows the product is free of the bacteria blamed for the death of a Missouri infant.

Mead Johnson Nutrition said two tests of samples of its Enfamil Premium Newborn formula found no sign of the bacteria, known as Cronobacter sakazakii. The samples tested were taken from the same lot as the formula given to the baby boy who died…

The Missouri case prompted retail giant Walmart to pull all cans of the same size and lot number from its shelves last week. Another newborn baby was sickened in Illinois, but is recovering from the infection, according to the state health department.

“These new results reaffirm the testing conducted before the batch was made available to retailers and consumers,” the company said in a written statement on the results. “Based on both sets of tests, Mead Johnson can say with confidence that Enfamil Premium Newborn formula, like every infant formula the company produces, is safe.”

State authorities and the federal Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control have been testing similar samples for the bacteria, which the CDC says sickens four to six people a year…

The company said its findings match those of health agencies that have conducted their own tests. Early indications led authorities to suspect a link to powdered infant formula, but state and federal tests found no Cronobacter, the CDC’s Dr. Robert Tauxe said Friday.

“We really don’t have evidence that the two infections are related to each other,” Tauxe told CNN. “Those two cases that occurred this past month may just be a coincidence.

The next circle of testing – which will press the scientists at the CDC much further – will have to involve the range of products also aimed at newborns and often consumed in conjunction with Enfamil Newborn. A thinner more tenuous connection; but, one which must be examined.

Patrick Bora,73, left, and his partner Jim Darby, 79, show off their civil union license
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

More than 100 same-sex couples lined up outside of a Chicago municipal building Wednesday morning to obtain licenses for civil unions, under a new Illinois law.

The atmosphere was festive, with license-seekers taking pictures of each other, and city workers waving and calling out “congratulations…”

Couples can have a civil union ceremony one day after receiving their licenses. A mass ceremony with 32 couples will be held at Millennium Park, Thursday morning, with Governor Pat Quinn attending.

The Illinois law gives same-sex couples the same rights, benefits and responsibilities of married couples under Illinois law, including rights of hospital visitation and shared parental rights, explained Christopher Clark, senior staff attorney for the gay rights law group Lambda Legal. The new rights do not include those provided married couples under federal law, such as receipt of a partner’s Social Security benefits.

“This is an important step on our march to equality,” said Clark. “Federal law has to change…”

Gabrielle Novacek, 35, and her partner Nicole Montanye, 39. are planning a joint ceremony Sunday with their friends…

Novacek said she doesn’t understand why anyone would object to civil unions. “If you feel threatened by us, that’s really unfortunate,” Novacek said. “You’re the one that has a problem.”

Sooner or later, the “land of the free” will reach the point where that so-called freedom includes real separation of state from church, freedom from the bigotry of ignorance and fear.

The United States is not in a position of providing any sort of moral leadership on this planet as long as our politicians spend time trying to interfere with love between consenting adults instead of providing access to equal civil rights.

A jury has found a Joliet man guilty of first-degree murder for fatally shooting a man during a 2009 melee after the victim told his pregnant girlfriend she looked fat in a photograph…

Tyrone Henderson, 31, also was found guilty of home invasion, criminal trespass to residence, aggravated unlawful use of a weapon and being an armed habitual criminal.

Henderson shot Michael Amos, 21, on Aug. 26, 2009 at the victim’s home in Joliet, according to the Will County state’s attorney’s office. Amos had teased Henderson’s girlfriend that evening. She called Henderson, who arrived at Amos’ house a short time later armed with a .45-caliber weapon.

Henderson punched the victim’s brother in the face, which led to a melee inside the house. Henderson then brandished his weapon and shot Amos three times -– once in the shoulder, once in the stomach and once in the leg -– while others in the house tried to take the gun from his hand, officials said.

This dude sounds like he was looking for long time since he was born. Number one, ask your honey to stop hanging out with people rude enough to signify on her weight.

A 30-man armed SWAT team stormed a school in Illinois after a staff member accidentally called his wife from his pocket, causing her to believe that he was being held hostage.

Officers in America wearing riot gear and carrying automatic weapons searched Carlton Washburne School, Winnetka, for almost three hours after the woman, who has not been identified, called 911.

Joseph De Lopez, the local police chief, said the woman reported receiving a call from her husband in which she could hear muffled voices and believed he was being held captive by a man with a gun.

Within minutes a security perimeter was established around the school, whose pupils had left for the day, and officers poured into the building. Three TV news helicopters were circling above.

But while they were still searching the school, and the man’s distressed wife remained connected to his mobile phone and to 911, he returned home.

While driving back from work, he had called his wife by sitting on his mobile phone, which was in his back pocket, while he listened to hip-hop and talked to himself.

“His wife was the last number he’d dialled,” Chief De Lopez said.

Mark Friedman, the school district interim co-superintendent, explained that the music’s “gangster-like” lyrics had contributed to the woman’s concerns.

This passes for “good, clean fun” in the United States of America.

A former Chicago, Illinois, attorney has admitted that he helped create, push and hide fraudulent tax shelters that ended up costing the federal government billions of dollars in tax revenue…

Loopholes provided by Congress are never quite sufficient for the richest Americans. Reflect upon that while Republicans fall over each other to extend tax cuts for the richest 2% of our nation.

Erwin Mayer, 47, pleaded guilty in a New York federal court to conspiracy and tax evasion charges…

Law enforcement authorities — including investigators from the U.S. attorney’s office, the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Department of Justice’s tax division — said that Mayer designed, marketed, ran and defended illegal tax shelters, the clients of which wrongly claimed billions of dollars in fraudulent losses.

“These professionals, who were supposed to be the gatekeepers preventing fraud, instead helped their well-heeled clients avoid their tax obligations through deceit and trickery,” U.S. Attorney Preet Bharra said in a statement, referring to Mayer, some of his colleagues at the now defunct law firm Jenkins & Gilchrist, and others involved in the scam.

After being a partner at Altheimer and Gray in Chicago between 1994 and 1998, Mayer joined a new Chicago office of Texas-based Jenkins & Gilchrist. Up until 2006, Mayer and colleagues set up, pitched and ran high-fee tax shelters so clients could skirt taxes on significant income or gains, according to statements made during his guilty plea proceeding…

The Winnetka, Illinois, resident will be sentenced on February 10. He faces a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison on the conspiracy charge, plus another five years for tax evasion. Mayer has agreed to forfeit his two residences and various financial accounts worth more than $10 million as part of his plea deal.

That sentencing may be deferred. In the legalese of one of the web’s law blogs…”Given that Mayer will be providing ongoing cooperation with the prosecution, no date has been set for sentencing.”

I hopes he turns over every client who used his services to screw the overwhelming number of honest Americans who pay their fair share of taxes – and more. Time to pay up!

A police officer arrested Friday in Will County, Illinois, has been charged with one count of first-degree murder in connection with a two-state rural shooting rampage that left one man dead, authorities said.

Brian E. Dorian, 37, an officer with the Lynwood Police Department, will probably face other charges, said Will County State’s Attorney James W. Glasgow. In addition to the fatality, three people were wounded in the spree, which occurred south of Chicago…

He is being held on a probable cause warrant, and bail was set at $2.5 million, said Charles Pelkie, a spokesman for the Will County state’s attorney’s office.

“It’s always law enforcement’s worst nightmare when someone in the law enforcement community chooses to break the law,” Glasgow said. “It’s critical that we act no differently in investigating a policeman than we would any lay person. No professional courtesies. No special treatment…”

The shootings began about 10:30 a.m. Tuesday at a construction site near Beecher, Illinois. The gunman killed one worker at the site and wounded two others, police have said.

An hour later and about 10 miles away in Lowell, Indiana, authorities believe the same gunman opened fire again — this time on a local farmer. Keith Dahl was shot in the left shoulder, arm and elbow, and then was robbed.

Dorian’s been a leave for a spell with an injured shoulder. Wonder if he was taking any heavy-duty painkillers?

Scott Lee Cohen, who withdrew as a candidate for lieutenant governor after winning the primary, says he will run as an independent for Illinois governor.

The millionaire pawnbroker won the Democratic primary for the state’s No. 2 job but withdrew after domestic abuse allegations and his relationship with a prostitute were unearthed by the media.

Cohen also admitted using steroids, allegedly failed to make child-support payments and has been named in dozens of lawsuits involving back taxes.

Cohen said he decided to run because he’s tired of waste and mismanagement in government.

Har!

Dick Simpson stood somberly on the fifth floor of the century-old Cook County Building last week, in an area between two banks of elevators with the faint aroma of cheap institutional cleaner. His topic was as dispiriting as the ill-lit environ chosen for a no-news press briefing.

“Corruption in Cook County: Anti-Corruption Report Number 3” was the handout for the event, and Mr. Simpson was joined by Andy Shaw, the longtime television reporter who now runs the Better Government Association, and Representative Mike Quigley, a North Side Democrat who did time on the Cook County Board of Commissioners…

And, yet — as I listened to the presenters talk about documented misdeeds being just the tips of icebergs; the “corruption tax” we pay in more expensive services; and the virtual non-efforts of Cook County’s state attorneys — I couldn’t help recalling a distant night in El Salvador. It was in the late 1980s, during the civil war in which the United States supported an often-odious government. I was at a spaghetti dinner in the capital, San Salvador, with veteran foreign correspondents who debated this: Who’s the biggest crook ever?

There were citations of billion-dollar thefts and whole industries nationalized to enrich a single family. There were many strong candidates, but not one American was mentioned.

It’s partly why one might wonder about the unceasing refrain from Rush Limbaugh and his ideological confreres in Washington about “the Chicago way” of doing business. It’s all tied to bashing President Obama and top aides as being products of a culture of chicanery…

By some measures, corruption in Illinois even trails that in five or six other states, with Florida leading the way…

Read the rest of this entry »

Plainfield police said they have seized nine cell phones after a 16-year-old high school honors student took a nude photograph of herself and sent it to a male student.

The picture quickly went viral on campus, and a Plainfield East High School official contacted authorities last week, prompting what police are calling their largest-ever sexting investigation. In one sign of how quickly the photo spread, some of the original senders told police they had received it from other people last week, according to court documents.

Viewing the photograph and forwarding it are technically violations of child pornography statutes, though police and the Will County state’s attorney’s office say they typically handle such cases through juvenile probation. No one has been charged…

It’s not clear how many of Plainfield East’s roughly 1,300 students received or forwarded the photo, but it could easily number in the hundreds, police said…

Nine cell phones — including two that were already found to contain the photo — have been turned over to computer forensic specialists at the Will County Sheriff’s Department.

A school district spokesman declined to comment Wednesday, citing student privacy concerns. School board Vice President Roger Bonuchi said only that parents should warn their children against “doing immoral acts.”

Lots of interesting questions about freedom for teenagers. Stupidity certainly is a component.

Have to wonder how many members of the Plainfield PD now have copies of the photo on their own cellphones, eh?

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

A letter from senior Cabinet members to Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn said that an unspecified number of Guantanamo detainees will be sent to the Thomson Correctional Center in Thomson, Illinois, about 150 miles west of Chicago.

The federal government will buy the prison and enhance one section of it to exceed perimeter security standards at the nation’s only “supermax” prison in Colorado…

The exact number of detainees to be transferred to the prison is “hard to pin down because categories of detainees may shift. While 100 may be the upper limit, the actual number at well below that (75 or perhaps even less),” said another senior official…

About 215 detainees are held by the U.S. military at the camp in Cuba.

In a White House briefing, senior administration officials authorized to speak on background said Thomson prison would receive Guantanamo detainees facing trial in U.S. courts or by military commission. Detainees being sent to other countries would travel directly from Guantanamo without coming to the United States, they said.

Gov. Quinn and Sen. Richard Durbin, both Illinois Democrats, were headed to the White House for a briefing on the plan to use the Thomson Correctional Center to help shut down the camp at Guantanamo Bay.

Now the whining from Republicans and other professional wusses will begin. “Alack and aday – how can we ever be safe with known terrorists housed in a prison on American soil?”

Send me a penny postcard when one of these creeps complains about torture or violations of the Geneva Convention.